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Parental Shackles And Yokes

Mass Effect 2, or teasingly called Daddy Issues: The Game, barely touches the surface of getting to know your crew in a military sense. Let’s say the timeline for ME2 is five years. At some point, you would get to know your crew with more than a “hello” on the way to the bathroom. The “daddy issues” only come into play because a good chunk of your team has some sort of issue with their father or their children.

Samara and Thane have to deal with them being the source of their children’s issues and are trying to make it right, while other members, like Jacob and Miranda, have to be the ones to severe ties with their fathers.

Most late 20s – early 30s people today are realizing or have realized earlier in life that their parents aren’t that great. With information about emotional abuse and narcissistic parents, adult children probably feel a bit overwhelmed and unloved.

When a parent makes their child feel like a burden, that feeling can be carried well into adulthood. When the child wants to confront their parent(s) about what happened during their innocent years, sometimes the parent(s) will double down and say the child was just imagining mistreatment, or they’ll say that the child was just getting a fraction of what they experienced as a child so they should be most grateful, or they’ll own to their mistakes and try to do better for their now adult children.

When dealing with parents who… Are less than willing to unpack the damage they’ve done to their children, whether willingly or unknowingly, they’re refusing to do better by and for their children. Their children then deem this behavior as “normal”, only to be shocked that a friend or a lover down the road has parents that have a different “normal”. The shock and sadness that comes with finding families with a more “happier normal” makes you feel out of place. At the same time, it brings you hope.

Parents are still flawed human beings. Just because they handed you a randomized set of DNA, that doesn’t make them any better (or worse) than other humans. A title alone doesn’t mean that you should put up with mistreatment. If a friend disrespects you, you are well within your right to scold them and cut them off if they keep doing it. So, why do we keep going back to our parents after they harm us? Why do we keep going back to people that refuse to do better their children?

Some adult children have very little to no contact with their parents because of various trauma. “Good people” will always ask “Why? They’re your parents! They should be in your life!”, not caring about the thousand-yard stare they caused.

When asked “why”, it reopens the wounds from their childhood for some. Others will plainly say it’s none of their business.

If you have less than stellar parents, it’s more than okay to have little to no contact with them. It’s more than okay to protect YOURSELF than the image of a “perfect” family that you know doesn’t exist. If your parents did the bare minimum but tout about how they did they things were SUPPOSED to do, it’s okay to let them go.

You parents are still people and people are flawed. That doesn’t mean you have to put up with it.

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One thought on “Parental Shackles And Yokes”

This was excellent, and a topic few people will broach because, for some reason, it seems “taboo.” It shouldn’t be taboo because adult children who suffered as a result of bad parenting need validation. Parents are often the best “gaslighters” of them all, denying very specific, very vivid memories. Guilt? I don’t know. But they seem to rewrite history to suit how they want to view themselves because sometimes there is something inside them that will not let them ever say the words “I was wrong to do that, and I am sorry.” And when they pass away, you sometimes have to learn to accept an apology that was never given.